THE POISONERS INVADE INDIAN COUNTRY.

Government officials and the waste industry have formed a tight
alliance aimed at making sure the producers of dangerous wastes
have a place to put their toxic garbage. We call this alliance
the "regulatory-industrial complex" because the phrase captures
so well what's going on. Despite what you may read in a civics
textbook, there is not a venal uncaring waste industry being held
in check by a government that is aggressively protecting the
environment. There is in fact a venal uncaring waste industry
being supported and assisted by the federal government, often
with the active participation of state and local governments.
Together, they are destroying the earth as a place suitable for
human habitation. They do this in the name of maintaining our
"way of life."

As citizens have become concerned about obvious deterioration of
the global ecosystem and about rising rates of disease among
Americans, it has become nearly impossible to site new waste
dumps and incinerators. Faced with two alternatives--to force
industry to produce less waste, or to find new places to disperse
toxins--the government's policy overwhelming favors new places
for dispersal. It would be unheard of for government to interfere
in the manufacturing processes of industry.

Traditionally, the place for burying and burning wastes has been
communities dominated by African-Americans, Asian-Americans,
Hispanics and poor whites. Now these groups have joined with
middle-class whites to form a far-reaching loose-knit coalition
known as the grass-roots movement for environmental justice. As a
result, it is now nearly impossible to site new dumps and
incinerators anywhere.

The response of the regulatory-industrial complex has been to
search for untapped lands where people might still be persuaded
to accept the toxic residues of industrial society. What better
place than lands occupied by native peoples--the place
traditionally known as Indian Country.

There are more than 120 distinct native groups remaining from the
10 million indigenous people who inhabited North America when the
European conquest began in 1492. Now some two million strong,
native peoples live in several hundred distinct communities,
bands, tribes or nations. Their land holdings vary in size from a
few hundred acres to many millions of acres. However, they all
tend to share certain characteristics, chief among them poverty,
high unemployment, a religious reverence for all of nature, and a
recognition that the well-being of humans depends upon the
well-being of the Earth. The federal agency with the greatest
interest in native people is the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA),
which exercises Uncle Sam's trustee responsibilities over Indian
lands. BIA is part of the Department of Interior.

Some time during 1988, Interior Department decided that it would
be good "economic development" for native people to have dumps
and incinerators built on their lands. About that same time the
federal Department of Energy created the Office of the Nuclear
Waste Negotiator. A letter from that office, dated April 10,
1991, says its "mission is to find a State or Indian tribe
willing to host a repository or monitored retrievable storage
facility for nuclear waste...." These 1988 events marked the
beginning of a major assault on Indian lands by the
regulatory-industrial complex, an assault now in full swing.

For its part, industry did not need much prodding to see the
wisdom of using Indian lands as dumping grounds. Indian lands are
exempt from state and local laws. U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) has no jurisdiction over municipal solid waste (MSW)
facilities on Indian lands. The BIA would need to issue a license
for an MSW facility (a dump or incinerator). However BIA would be
the first to acknowledge it has no technical staff competent to
evaluate proposals and no regulations governing operation of
waste facilities.

EPA does have authority over hazardous waste facilities on Indian
lands but industry knows well that EPA rarely if ever turns down
an application for a hazardous waste incinerator, even when it
has to ignore serious environmental concerns and substantial
public opposition. The absence of requirements for state, county,
or regional government approval of hazardous waste facilities
means Indian lands offer many fewer hurdles to would-be hazardous
waste dumpers, compared to proposals on non-Indian lands.

A typical proposal comes from lawyers representing Bechtel
Corporation--one of the largest construction firms in America
with annual revenues exceeding $10 billion.[1] Sam Goodhope of
the Washington law firm, Bode and Hainline, wrote September 25,
1990, to Leroy Clifford, a BIA employee stationed on the Pine
Ridge Reservation of the Lakota (Oglala Sioux) people.[2] Mr.
Goodhope misspelled Oglala but no matter--the details (such as
culture and social needs) of the native people were not why he
was writing. His letter spoke candidly of "targeted
tribes"--native groups that Bechtel had targeted for projects.
What kinds of projects? The sky's the limit; Mr. Goodhope's
letter says Bechtel is willing to negotiate for 8 kinds of
projects: a "cogeneration plant" [he doesn't say exactly what
that is--garbage and coal? sewage sludge and garbage? garbage and
hazardous waste?], a hydroelectric power plant (with or without
any existing dams, says Mr. Goodhope), a hazardous waste disposal
facility, a nuclear waste disposal facility, a "second generation
nuclear power generation facility," an electrical transmission
facility, oil and gas transport and refining facilities or "other
large projects." Pick your poison-Bechtel would like to help you
take it if you are an Indian.

The letter makes clear that Bechtel and the BIA are making a
concerted effort to locate "large projects" on any Indian land
where the natives seem friendly to the idea.

Amoco, the oil giant, has been much more selective. Amoco has
restricted its proposals so far to half a dozen enormous
projects, each combining a hazardous waste incinerator, a
hazardous waste landfill, and perhaps a solvent "recycling"
facility. Solvent "recycling" is EPA's phrase for a company that
takes in liquid hazardous waste, blends it with fuel oil to
create a flammable, toxic, mixture, then sells the mixture to
cement kilns and industrial boilers where it is burned, thus
distributing the hazardous wastes, liability-free, into local
environments. The Amoco subsidiary making these proposals is
called Waste-Tech and its overtures have been rejected during the
last 18 months by Chikaloons in Alaska, Tyoneks in Alaska,
Kaibab-Paiutes in Arizona, Moapas in Nevada, Kaws in Oklahoma,
and Navajos in Arizona. In short, every Waste-Tech proposal to
date has been rejected, but no one imagines that Indian people
have heard the last from Waste-Tech.[3]

There have been dozens of other waste proposals for native lands.
(For a listing, see the reports mentioned in footnotes 2 and 3.)
This enormous assault has brought forth an intense response from
native people, who recognize that more than their health is
jeopardized. Last year at Dilkon, AZ, a Navajo group called CARE
(Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment) hosted the first
annual conference, Protecting Mother Earth--The Toxic Threat to
Indian Land. In mid-June, 1991, the second annual conference was
held near Bear Butte in the Black Hills of South Dakota, attended
by 500 individuals representing 50 tribes. Carter Camp, a Ponca
leader from Oklahoma, told the conference that the invasion of
native lands by the waste industry, aided by the federal
government, represents a serious threat to Indian
sovereignty--the right of native people to control their own
destiny on their own land. Dumps created on native land will leak
in the future and may threaten non-native people living nearby.
This would provide the dominant society an excuse to declare that
native people are unfit to conduct their own affairs and are
themselves a hazard that must be controlled. (Mr. Camp's
organization is focused on sovereignty issues; Campaign for
Sovereignty, Box 132, Red Rock, OK 74651; phone (405) 723-4220.)